Opposition Leader Calls for Inquest into Online Sex Videos

The Moscow Times

Apr. 27 2010 00:00

Last edited 21:37

Ilya Yashin, a leader of the Solidarity opposition movement, sent requests Monday to three law enforcement agencies, calling on them to investigate the origin of a series of compromising Internet videos targeting opposition politicians and journalists.

Under the law, violating an individual's privacy and the illegal distribution of pornography can be punished by prison terms of up to four years and up to two years, respectively.

In letters to the Prosecutor General's Office, the Investigative Committee and the Interior Ministry, Yashin asked their heads to check whether the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov, or Federal Agency for Youth Affairs chief Vasily Yakemenko were behind the videos, Yashin wrote in his LiveJournal blog.

The latest videos were released Thursday, with footage showing satirist and radio host Viktor Shenderovich; writer and Other Russia opposition movement leader Eduard Limonov; and Alexander Potkin, leader of the nationalist Movement Against Illegal Migrants, having sex with the same woman.

Shenderovich accused people from the retinue of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of setting up the hidden-camera sting against him and others.

In March, clips featuring Yashin, independent political commentator Dmitry Oreshkin and the Russian Newsweek editor Mikhail Fishman giving bribes to traffic police were posted on the web site of the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth group.

Surkov, the Kremlin's top domestic politics guru, is widely seen as Nashi's creator, while Yakemenko was its first leader and remains a patron of the group through his post in the government.

Nashi and the government have denied involvement.

In his letters, Yashin identified the woman having sex in the videos as Yekaterina Gerasimova, whom he said works at the OrangeDisco event company in Moscow, and he called on the investigators to question her.

Yashin said he had been in a rented apartment with Gerasimova and another woman, whom he identified as Anastasia Chukova, "under similar circumstances" to those in the sex video that surfaced last week. He said it was possible he was also filmed and that the video could eventually be posted online.

Meanwhile, a Russian rock legend who has been critical of the Kremlin, DDT front man Yury Shevchuk, wrote in his LiveJournal blog on Monday that it was possible that a sex video featuring him and Gerasimova would surface.

No normalization of ties between Ukraine and Russia is likely unless the region of Crimea, now under Russian control, is returned to Kiev's sovereignty, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said Tuesday.

Boris Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin and Russia's role in the Ukraine crisis, has been shot dead outside the Kremlin in a murder that underscored the risks taken by the Russian opposition.

The murder of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov has dampened any hope for a peaceful political transition in Russia away from President Vladimir Putin's government, Garry Kasparov, a prominent opposition voice, has said.

A spokesperson for Moscow's information technology department has denied media reports that some of the surveillance cameras around the Kremlin had been switched off at the time of Boris Nemtsov's murder.

The U.S. State Department and FBI have announced a $3 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Russian Yevgeny Bogachev, the highest bounty U.S. authorities have ever offered in a cyber case.